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This study explores how the national artificial intelligence (AI) strategies and policies in four sub-Saharan African countries – Mauritius, South Africa, Ghana and Gabon – influence the adoption of AI in journalism. In the journalistic world, AI have been mainly used for news gathering, production and distribution. Irrespective of the prospects, the pervasive nature of AI brings with it a host of challenges concerning privacy, gender, and ethnic bias. Despite its relevance to journalism, the challenges associated with using AI necessitate the need for policy frameworks that guide the development and usage of these technologies. At a global level, UNESCO has established a normative framework which lays out principles and standards regarding how member states formulate policies that ensures ethical and healthy development of AI. Using document analysis and the technological determinism theory, the study investigated how the national AI policies and strategies of these countries is impacting journalism and highlights the challenges to the adoption of the technology in the field. In lieu of the AI-specific laws, the countries seem to loosely rely on their data protection acts to govern aspects of AI use involving automated decision making. Mauritius was found to be the only country in the study with a set national AI strategy.

The advent of data-driven journalism has transformed the field of journalism globally, offering new ways to collect, analyse and communicate stories and information. In contexts such as Africa, where socio-political and economic contexts differ significantly from those in the Global North, the need for critical data literacy in journalism education is particularly pronounced. This chapter proposes and argues for developing critical data literacy skills among journalism students. It suggests that fostering a critical approach to data is essential for producing impactful, contextually relevant, and unbiased data-driven journalism. The chapter addresses the unique challenges faced by journalism education and presents strategies (an agenda) for integrating critical data literacy into journalism curricula.

This chapter focuses on data journalism, a relatively new brand of journalistic practices that take advantage of the growing availability and application of digital data and computational tools for news production. Although this brand of journalism has been on in some advanced democracies, it is still a relatively new development in Africa, especially Nigeria. Journalists still rely mostly on eyewitness reports and interviews to write their stories, thus leading to lack of depth in media reportage of critical issues. This chapter explores the nature of data journalism conceptualised as a social science pragmatic approach to news gathering and reporting, tracing its history and inherent strengths and weaknesses. It examines the windows of opportunities it provides towards guaranteeing transparency and accountability in Nigeria's nascent democracy. It concludes that, though data journalism complements the conventional investigative reporting to enhance good governance system in Nigeria, strengthening other institutions of government such as the police, judiciary, Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC), and Independent Corrupt Practices and other related offences Commission (ICPC) becomes imperative in entrenching accountability and transparency in Nigeria.

The chapter deals with a service-learning course based in the School of Journalism and Media Studies at Rhodes University in South Africa. It provides a backdrop for the case study, describing the context in which the course is based and kind of intervention that it aims to make into this context. It then maps out the theoretical framework that informs the course, explaining how this is informed by the available spectrum of approaches to service-learning. It demonstrates how the course draws on the concept of a ‘communicative ecology’, to provide itself with a language in which to reflect on the social significance of communication. The chapter then reviews the first cycle of the course which took place in 2019, drawing on insights from participants (teachers, students and community partners). It deals, firstly, with the participants’ engagement with the concept of service-learning. Secondly, it describes their experience of service-learning as a communicative process. Finally, it describes their evaluation of this process as an intervention into the local communicative ecology. It is demonstrated that service-learning enables the school to respond strategically to the need for innovative communicative practices both in their immediate environment and within the broader South African context.

This study examines three significant collaborative journalism projects in the Americas: The Panama Papers, from the United States-based International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ); “América Latina, Región de Carteles,” by Colombian-based Connectas; and the first phase of the Brazilian-based project, Comprova, supported by Brazilian Association of Investigative Journalists (Abraji) and First Draft. The work investigates what encompasses collaborative journalism; and explores whether it is a recent phenomenon of the news ecosystem, a consequence of the institutional crisis of journalism, and if it is influenced by a network-based and platformed society. A mixed-method approach is applied in a three-stage analysis: (1) desk research; (2) quantitative content analysis; and (3) qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews. To gain a broader picture of the organizations and their respective projects, documental and bibliographical research was carried out with a focus on data from press releases, corporate reports, and articles published on the websites of the organizations coordinating the projects. Furthermore, a quantitative content analysis of 10 news articles published by each of these collaboration partnerships was completed. Finally, qualitative semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with the directors, managers, and professional journalists’ part of the organizations and project. This study emphasizes the importance of collaborative practices, demonstrates how collaborative practices contribute to a new modus operandi of the news ecosystem; and considers why journalists and media organizations have turned to collaborative journalism as a model of production, circulation, and distribution of journalistic investigations.

This chapter investigates how alternative digital journalism operates in the broader context of the austerity economy in Greece. Using as a background the historical interweaving of interests between economic power, political power and media, this chapter explores the current state of digital journalism in Greece and whether it can flourish and serve the ideals of independence, objectivity and pluralism. The Internet provides new possibilities for pluralism in journalism and gives rise to alternative media outlets that purport objectivity and independence from vested economic interests (e.g., advertising) and political pressures. However, the financial sustainability of such ventures is questionable and the regulatory framework in a heavily concentrated Greek media ecology weak or nonexisting. In this chapter, we examine the origins and mission statements of selected cases of alternative digital media outlets/projects, as well as their financing sources and business models. We then discuss sustainability issues and the limits to alternative digital journalism. Our empirical data derive from desktop research, short structured interviews with academics and longer semistructured interviews with key actors of alternative digital media.

Crisis in journalism is a widely discussed and controversial topic in Greece since 2009 when economic recession afflicted the Greek society. However, the last decade of financial hardships and ownership changes in the Greek media sector (2009–2019) gave rise to a widening of perception on the part of journalists of what really crisis stands for when it comes to their profession. Based on 25 in-depth interviews with Greek leading news media professionals from all types of media outlets (press, television, radio and news websites), the present research describes how journalists perceive, assess and manage the crisis of their profession in today's networked media landscape, characterised by unprecedented phenomena such as the rise of churnalism, post truth journalism and fake news in the context of new trends with regard to how the Greek audience is seeking information and consuming news. While existing research on journalism profession has tended to emphasise the conversion of journalist into a multitasked employee towards audience members who treat journalism with suspicion, this chapter focusses on to what extent journalists by themselves are critical of their profession's vulnerabilities such as the lack of genuine investigative journalism, alienation from the actual reporting based on primary material and manipulation of media professionals within an unstable market. The research gives insights into journalists' opinions and attitudes with regard to the symptoms indicating that journalism in Greece is suffering from chronic and acute crises related to the extraction and dissemination of news, the relationship of journalists with media owners as well as the operation of the media market.

The author explores questions of authenticity in the media industry by showing how right-wing media figures look to present their views as authentic by defining themselves as citizen journalists and positioning themselves in opposition to mainstream media. Looking at two case studies from the United States, Andrew Breitbart and Mike Cernovich, the author shows how the language of citizen journalism (amateurism, independence, immediacy) is co-opted by such figures to appeal to increasingly distrustful and antagonistic conservative media audiences.

The concept of participatory journalism draws attention to the shortcomings of established journalism by emphasising the role of the audience for boosting pluralism, transparency, deliberation and media accountability. Drawing on filed theory, the study attempts to shed light on whether the former audience can disrupt the field of journalism. To do so, it investigates the level and preferred forms of participation and provides evidence on how users perceive of the participatory affordances offered through news media websites. Although users assign public discourse functions to participatory avenues, the study confirms the reluctant audience paradigm, and the popularity of tools enabling low editorial capacity. From a field perspective, it is argued that although users' doxa denotes democratising ideas about participation, their behaviour is ultimately driven by their weak habitus (position) in the field. To use Bourdieu's metaphor, the power in the journalistic game still lies in the hands of professionals; users are not willing or capable of disrupting the norms and practices of mainstream journalism.